OKLAHOMA CITY – One of Oklahoma City’s oldest surviving Route 66 motels from the 1930s has survived the bulldozer twice and been transformed.
The centerpiece of the development at Britton Road and Classen Boulevard is the historic Owl Court office, an A-frame building that encompasses approximately 225 square feet.
Owl Court motel was built about 1930, shortly after
the corner of Britton Road and Classen Boulevard was designated a Route 66 bypass around Oklahoma City.
At that time the Town of Britton was several miles north of Oklahoma City. The town was founded in 1889, and at one time had its own post office, police and fire departments. But in 1950 the community’s residents voted to merge with Oklahoma City as it was starting to creep north toward Edmond.
Afterward the entire area declined and deteriorated. Owl Court, for example, has escaped demolition twice.
The first time was in 2006, when an investor saved the corner from being purchased and razed for a car lot; however, he was unable to complete renovation of the property. A dozen years later a local banker who was trying to promote redevelopment of the Old Britton area discovered that the City of Oklahoma City had placed the Owl Court property on the delinquent-and-abandoned property list and was on the brink of having it demolished.
That’s when the banker and five other investors created Owl Court LLC and rescued the property. The six investors bought the property in early 2018 with plans to convert some of the motel rooms into offices.
A shack and a couple of other derelict buildings on the site had to be demolished.
The surviving motel rooms were so dilapidated that they were gutted and overhauled, literally from the ground up.
“The first thing we had to do was stabilize” the building that housed the few remaining salvageable motel rooms, said Marc Weinmeister, broker and managing member of Owl Court LLC. New trusses were installed, the building was reroofed, and a portico was added. Floors throughout the building had to be leveled, which required several yards of concrete, and the entire building was rewired and replumbed.
Those rooms have since been renovated into four modern office suites totaling about 1,960 square feet and marketed as “The Courts.”
At some point it occurred to the owners that the office building at the front of the property might accommodate a coffee shop. Such is serendipity.
While living in the Seattle-Tacoma area in Washington in 2018, “I started going to a coffee shop and filling out job applications,” said Stillwater native Elijah Vick. He noticed the shop received many requests for deliveries but didn’t provide the service, so he volunteered and began making deliveries for the business.
After returning to Oklahoma, Vick, 35, began scouting locations for a coffee shop of his own and spotted Owl Court.
The aged A-frame structure needed some attention but had possibilities.
A leak in the pitched roof was patched, the antiquated windows were replaced, the wooden floor was refinished, and the wood paneling was thoroughly cleaned. The bathroom, which wasn’t even remotely ADA-compliant, was torn out and overhauled. A painted owl from the original Owl Court motel is still visible on the west side exterior wall of the building, and the Owl Court sign atop the office was repaired.
Brew Brother Coffee opened for business last October. Six days a week Vick squeezes into the tiny building amid three sinks, a refrigerator/freezer, supplies of coffee, tea, spices and snacks, an espresso machine, and a little utility room.
He can take orders through a sliding window on the front of the building, and walk-up patrons can sip their drinks and munch on pastries on wooden tables erected in the development’s outdoor plaza. Vick’s coffee shop is visited by, among others, doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at nearby hospitals, including one directly across the street.
To survive the coronavirus pandemic and to boost his business, Vick attracted a couple of investors and markets “Brew Boxes” – containing coffee, a tasting glass, a coffee mug, plus a Brew Brother T-shirt – to walk-up and online customers.
Another of his ideas is a festival he plans to host in July in the Owl Court plaza, featuring a “music battle” and a “barista battle.”
Eventually he hopes to attract more drive-through customers. Traffic on Britton Road in the vicinity of Brew Brother Coffee averages approximately 14,600 vehicles daily, research by the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments reflects.